Paperwork, it's always bloody paperwork

Wednesday 16th December

There's something you should know about this project.

I haven't got the faintest clue what I'm doing.

Seriously.

It's not like painting and decorating was ever part of my family life or a class at school or anything silly like that, I mean really, when do people learn this sort of thing?

I'm thirty three years old and although I understand the concept of wallpaper I've yet to come to grasp with the actual mechanics of it. I'm assuming that somewhere there's involved a brush, some glop and at some point a goblin pops out of a hole in the ether and just does the job for you.

Like magic, if you will.

That was an entire morning wasted waiting for that magic goblin to show up, I even had doughnuts waiting for it. Maybe I should have invested in some whisky instead.

Anyway, there I was, in a bare room with a flimsy table, some paper, a ten bajillion gallon of glop and no fricking clue as to what I was doing. My memory was telling me something about getting a ballon and old newspaper but I'm not sure how making papier-mache heads was going to help at this point so I put that on the to-do list for later.

I listened to Fred at this point and had a cup of tea and consulted the idiots guide to DIY I had stashed in the library and occasionally drag out for manly tasks like this. It covers everything in detail with full colour photographs throughout and so it's completely foolproof and in no way to be challenged.

The writers were obviously not ready for the level of simplicity that my brain was in need of since it fell into the utterly-bloody-useless category within an hour of starting.

Now, one thing I am absolutely sure of since completing the job is that I never want to hear another person ask me why I used lining paper. Nobody in the world other than me seems to have used it, with it being a wasted resource but my reasons are simple, it says to do it in the book, the woman at the hardware place said it wasn't a bad idea and I liked the idea of having an extra bit of insulation in the room. It was my first job and it was my office so I was going to do it right, ok?

Yes, I did come to regret that decision within a couple of hours. You want to know why? Well let's start with a long and tedious job having to be done twice now because of my stupid need to get things done correctly. More fool me. But that's nowhere near as bad as the first instruction when having to put up lining paper. How many of you know what that first instruction is?

I can hear you laughing at the back there. Let me share it with the rest of the class.

Lining paper has to be hung perpendicular to the real wallpaper. That means horizontally.

I'll let that sink in for a second so you can visualise it.

Yes, on my own I was pasting seven foot stretches of paper and then trying to figure out how to hold up one end to the wall and press it on, in the right place, without air pockets, and then trace my way across the wall rather than down without it catching on anything, picking up fluff from the carpet or dribbling glop all over myself. Repeatedly. Over and over and over again round and round and round the room and around the windows (of which there are two in this room, going behind the radiator, not trapping the cats (who only want to help) and then finding the light switch and power sockets without them getting all sticky and horrible.

Oh yes, that's fun.

Now I am covered in drying glop, my hands are crusted together, the carpet is smeared with all the detritus of the fun and games, and I am the proud possessor of a room so white I could house a psychiatric patient happily for a year providing I threw in fresh crayons every month or so.

Now we get the biggest hidden drawback to using lining paper. See, I wanted to get the job done so I could move in and start using it as an office. But if you've not wallpapered before you might not know one fairly important detail. I know I didn't know this.

You have to leave the room for a couple of days to dry out before you can touch it.

This is a good thing in one respect because a lot of the small bubbles and bumps just vanish overnight as the paper fits and stretches and so on, but for me it was just another few days with all my toolboxes and bits lying around the rest of the house.

Which sucks.

Anyway, cut forward another couple of days and we get on with the main job of the piece, putting up the wallpaper. The cunning wallpaper with a pattern that has to match. The coloured wallpaper that I specially chose because of the colour, the lack of flowers and the price. Yes, it was cheap. Leave me alone.

So you have to pick a spot to start with and draw a vertical line. With a plumb line and a spirit level. I don't have a seven foot spirit level. I do however have a bit of string with a kinder egg on the end that I use to torment the cats.

It all looked quite good until I took a step back. That didn't work so I stepped closer again. Matching wet paper on a nearly flat surface isn't as difficult as you might think. What is difficult however is the simple things.

Trying not to crease the paper? Impossible.

Hanging wet paper in line with other paper while matching patterns and not catching air bubbles? Impossible.

Corners? Forget it.

When I reached my first corner I was in good spirits. I might not have been doing a perfect job, but for my first effort I wasn't doing bad and was actually thinking I might finish within a couple of years of starting. Then I reached the corner.

The house nearly wasn't standing at the end of the furious attack I launched at it at that point, both verbally and physically. I think there are wild animals living in the nearby park who have given up on ever venturing near my street ever again and one of the cats is now on valium for its nerves.

This was the first corner of six in this one small room and already I was ready for the rubber sheeting and the hugging coat.

It's probably best if we skip forward a few hours now.

Suffice it to say that wallpaper does not go up by swearing at it.

So it's up now. It's not perfect and there's quite a lot of wrinkles here and there, you don't even have to look for them to see them but they're there. A few wrinkles. The top and bottom of most of the hangs can be a little bit raggy in places until I got the hang of how to do those, but I am quite proud of the job. You can see out of the windows, the pattern matches up all around the room, even over the door and around the radiator, the plug sockets and the light switch are usable and all in all it's a nice clean room to use.

What surprised me more than anything was after the wallpaper went up the last job that needed doing before moving in was a couple of shelves, and I'm quite good at shelves now. After the library which I decorated (painted) a couple of years ago I had no fear of putting up shelves after the dozen or so ten foot jobbies I managed for that. In fact I still had one 10' shelf left over from that which had been lurking around getting in the way ever since.

Measure the wall, mark on the shelving places, level it out with a spirit level, mark up the holes, grab the drill, bung the holes in, rawlplugs, brackets, sand and shape the shelves and screw them into place, even going so far as to use spacers behind the shelves and bang, you're done. All in less than an hour.

Funny how these things turn out, isn't it.

Now I have no fear.

Between me and my darling we manhandled the stupid bloody desk upstairs and through the doorways. Oh yes, let's not forget having to take off one of the doors to get it into the room. Swearing alone didn't achieve that either, you'll be amazed to learn.

And so now I've been writing in this very office since Monday and bloody proud I am too.

The one eyed monster is no longer hypnotising me, and all I have to worry about is the internet, but there's virtually nothing on that, is there?

It's not like it's got everything in the world ever on it.